“Wow!” It’s the only word to describe the pace of ripening this year. After a seemingly endless string of warm weather throughout July, veraison has started earlier than I think in any year since we started making wine in 2007. The Merlot is already about 40% colored, perhaps more or less in some blocks, with the strongest vines leading the way. It’s going to be an exciting harvest!
After a very long twenty days I have returned from the vineyards with some hopeful news. We have harvested our Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay: We picked 3.12 tons (a rather larger than average harvest for our small block) of Sauv Blanc on 9/22/25 at dawn, then pressed it to stainless steel and chilled it for…
On June 21—the summer solstice—the vineyard is driven by a restless, explosive energy. In the weeks following fruit set, the vine canopy surges forward, wrapping the rows in a dense wall of foliage. But in the production of fine estate wine, abundance is not the objective. Exceptional character often begins with the art of subtraction….
Slowly reaching the end of veraison in the red blocks, with Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon both basically complete and the only laggard is the Cabernet Franc. We had the team go through again yesterday and drop all the remaining greed fruit. 2025 GDD: 1641 (delta to 2024 vintage: 213) Our Sauvignon Blanc is coming along…
Feels like time for a belated conclusory paragraph about the 2025 vintage, which was marked by highs and lows, and could have used a couple more highs. Since I last wrote at the end of September, when we had just racked Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay to tanks and barrels, we have concluded harvest. Two days…
We installed three large vegetable boxes near our well in the vineyard this year and planted tomatoes and two kinds of peppers, both generally popular in traditional Hungarian cuisine — sweet paprika peppers (for Chicken Paprikas) and gypsy peppers, a brilliantly neon green small pepper that can be eaten with dips, stuffed, or used as…
The red blocks have ripened tremendously in the past two weeks. Having finally reached veraison by the middle-end of August (not without dropping a fair bit of the remaining green fruit and shoulders from the biggest vines and clusters) — the reds are tasting delightful — and our Merlot is clocking 22 Brix, right on…